The Cult of Personlity strikes again.

 If you're reading this, you're either:

A. an uber hispter delving into arcane knowledge from an obscure designer who'll probably never make it big, so it's safe to read and maintain your indie credibility...

B. someone who has followed a link from a social media site because it seemed interesting, but otherwise aren't sure...

C. a person who has come here in the far future from when this post was written, because finally the authr actually has made it big in some way...

D. an AI trawler bot that has been programmed to go through blogs and collect data for the LLM that drives other parts of the algorithm...

E. someone who founf my moderately successful series of map drawing tutorials, and you wondered what else might be around here...

F. someone I haven't accounted for...

...either way, here comes a bit of a rant. 

In my experience, most people who participate in the hobby of TTRPGs don't run games for themselves, and most of them only ever play games under one or two GMs/DMs. Many players who have a bad experience with a group might look for another, but are just as likely to leave the hobby altogether. Those who have bad play experiences with two GMs or with two separate groups have a tendency to simply think that the hobby isn't for them rather than looking for ways to improve their experience. This is all supported by the 3-way tension theory... people leave games if they only know one mainstream gaming system and it doesn't provide the experience they expect, and they leave games if their GM/Narrator isn't providing the experience they expect.. in either case if they feel unfulfilled, they often don't see a reason to continue unless other factors keep them around (such as a supportive social group around them).

Those who are fanatical enough about gaming to attend conventions typically already have a vested interest in the hobby. However, once that level is reached, suddenly there's an exposure to a whole heap of new GMs, games and gaming styles. I remember having the same group of players in high school, and thought that this is what gaming was, but as soon as I started attending cons in the mid 90s, my eyes were opened dramatically. I played with GMs who were awesome, and played with GMs who were considered awesome, but were actually pretty mediocre...they were just well known and had enough charisma to develop a cult of personality around them. 

The rise of streamed games, and highly curated gaming podcast serials, means we don't need to attend conventions to get an experience of other gaming styles. This reminds me of the period in the mid 1990s when gaming circles had an influx of "Anne Rice" readers, theatre kids, and other outsiders from various parts of society when White Wolf's World of Darkness hit the scene... it introduced a wide variety of play styles and stories to the community, and now over the past decade we've seen voice-actors and b-list celebrities run their own games for audiences. The problem this time is that rather than providing a launchpad for the variety of games that are on offer, the vast majority of them are running the same game, but tweaking it in different ways to accommodate the stories they broadcast. Rather than spreading the wider hobby, their just broadcasting the same shit.

Honestly, from a corporate consistency perspective, this is probably considered a good thing. Through the filter of the "Three-Way Tension", we've got the same GM, the same players, and the same rules. It might be a different story (so we've got a new set of diegetic rules, even though the non-diegetic system is the same), but the influencing factors are mostly the same... the last "cookbook" post might describe this like three tubs of ice-cream... one vanilla, one vanilla bean, and one french vanilla. At least you know what you're getting but there isn't a lot of interest happening there. If you play the same game at home, you're switchng our the GM and the players, so two-thirds of the experience is different... it might still be ice-cream, and if you're playing similar to what they do on the screen you might end up with vanilla choc-chip, or caramel ripple...but then again you might end up with salted-caramel, mocha, or something else depending on who is contributing what to the mix. You'll never get what they broadcast, because there are different factors involved...and that's act6ually a good thing. 

I watch those play sessions and get bored, just the same as I get bored of eating ice-cream all the time. Use them to get ideas, use them to challenge your play style, but don't use them as the paragon of what gaming should be. That stuff is edited to within an inch of it's life, and is probably as scripted as the arena wrestling spectaculars.